Speaker: Ayshea Banes, Isaac Barnhill, Mihir Manna, and Abdollah Mohammadi, UW Madison Department of Physics
Abstract: This month we have updates on projects in physics education that are being led by people in the Department of Physics. These studies have the potential to improve physics and other courses at UW and elsewhere. Please join us in learning about them and providing helpful comments.
Ayshea Banes: My research explores ways to center Blackness within the physics classroom and how this may transform the Eurocentric pedagogy currently used to one that is culturally relevant and community-based. Another topic I researched (with Erika Marin-Spiotta, Dept. of Geography) was ways that anti-Blackness (more commonly known as white supremacy) appear within physics education and how by identifying its exclusionary mechanisms/assimilationist norms may lead to roads of Black liberation.
Isaac Barnhill (with Josh Weber & Peter Timbie): This experiment makes a controlled comparison between two different styles of instructional physics lab activity: traditional labs which aim to reinforce content learned in the course lectures, and experimentation labs which aim to teach students the role of experimentation in science broadly, and physics in particular. The study uses data from Physics 202 students to explore how students’ personal views on the nature and utility of experimentation are impacted by their lab curriculum and whether the new curriculum affects student exam scores.
Mihir Manna (with Ben Spike): Our research is centered on supporting strategic problem-solving approaches by students in Physics 103. Specifically, we are writing new discussion problems that encourage students to choose their own high-level strategies, rather than following a traditional “fill in the blanks” structure that can limit student agency. We hope that these prompts will help students gain a better appreciation for the usefulness of physics principles, generalize such approaches to other contexts, and feel more self-confident in their problem-solving ability.
Abdollah Mohammadi:
will present the results of a recent survey on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in our physics service courses, mainly 103, 104, 201, 202, 207, and 208. The survey explores how students engage with AI for learning, problem-solving, and testing their understanding, as well as their perceptions of its benefits and limitations. Key findings highlight trends in AI adoption, including its role in enhancing conceptual understanding, improving efficiency in coursework, and raising concerns about academic integrity. The results also reveal variations across different course levels and backgrounds. These findings could be useful to discuss and come up with some best practices for incorporating AI in a way that supports learning while maintaining rigorous academic standards.
